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New submitter jefery23 writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press article (as carried by the Denver Post): "Californians woke up to a shock Friday as overnight gasoline prices jumped by as much as 20 cents a gallon in some areas, ending a week of soaring costs that saw some stations close and others charge record prices." Friday's jump followed another big one just a day earlier, too. Texas gas prices have gone up, but not quite so dramatically ($3.59 at the station nearest to me); how are they in your neck of the woods? Those Bloom boxes and charging stations can't arrive too soon.

20 cents on $4 is only 5%. Being as California is probably paying a fair bit above $4, that would put the percentage even lower. I'm surprised they would make a big deal out of it if it one just one moment in time. If it was 5% in one day, for several days in a row, that would be more noticeable, but this is barely above the variance you'd likely find between two gas stations.

Wednesday morning, I noticed some gas stations near me (silicon valley, ca) had raised their prices by $0.40 or more since the previous day. By Thursday, all the local gas stations had caught up. That is approximately a 9% jump. If prices went up again yesterday (which I haven't noticed...) then the overall increase this past week is more like 15%.

Well, crude futures dipped the past week due to the economy, so it wouldn't be accurate to conclude that pump price increase is indicative of an "improving economy". Remember there's a lag of a month or so between the two, and if you look at this year's historical data, you'd see that crude was trading at its lowest in June, which translated to July having the lowest pump price this year. Likewise, we saw the trading price increase in August followed by a jump up to $100 in September, which is likely why we

Getting oil into California is not the problem with this jump in price that is largely isolated to California. The problem is that California requires a specific formulation in their gas that is more stringent then the rest of the country and only a few refineries bother producing it. One of the refineries are down for scheduled maintenance and another is hit with unscheduled maintenance creating a unique shortage condition for California.

No new refineries in the US, and yet refinery capacity is nearly at an all-time high [eia.gov].

It's about quality, not quantity. There are no new refineries being built because we've been improving the existing ones so much. We have the capacity to refine more fuels now than at any point in the past 30 years.

No new refineries in the US, and yet refinery capacity is nearly at an all-time high.

It's about quality, not quantity.

"Capacity" is inherently about quantity.

There are no new refineries being built because we've been improving the existing ones so much.

I wonder who else really believes that? When one actually looks at refineries built in the past 45 years [eia.gov], it is remarkable how little has been done. There's a simple explanation. Regulation has driven up the cost of building a new plant so much that it is cheaper to expand an existing plant than to build a new plant of the same capacity.

Consider this, there's apparently only one refinery in North Dakota at Mandan, ND. That refinery processes almost 60,000 barrels [tsocorp.com]

You say I'm getting robbed, yet I drive a nice car. I live in a nice home, in a nice city. I'm about to buy a beautiful house.

Far from feeling robbed, I feel lucky.

The United States left the gold standard during the great depression, because it provided too little flexibility for the country to get out of recessions. Inflation may have been low on the gold standard, but without a job, a high currency value doesn't really get you far.

A little inflation is a small price to pay for a good, or at least improvin

We've been closing down refineries for many, many years in the US due to low profit margins. Basically, it's a lot more lucrative to get the crude out of the ground and sell it as a raw product than it is to turn it into something useful. Now we're left with no spare refining capacity and as soon as something happens, the laws of supply and demand send the price skyrocketing. And there's almost always something happening somewhere. That's why even when we have a surplus of crude (and we often do), gas p

Yeah, the free market sucks. If you want a product, you have to pay enough to have it. Not everything can be shipped off to another country with more reasonable costs.

Oh, but there is. There are countries, such as Nigeria, with crude basically as good as the US, and we could work with the nigerian government to pay more and make the situation better, but instead we have this US first philosophy, in which we ship expensive canadian oil across the US and risk the US environment for fake crude that costs

My kneejerk reaction was to think "Oil companies want an 'R' to win so they make prices high while a 'D' is in office." But then I realized that this was baseless without some facts. What I would like to see is a map of the US showing average gas price by state, overlaid by a map of which states tend to vote R or D, overlaid with refinery locations, overlaid with oil producing states. Then, I would have a lot of data, and still nothing to go on but correlation.

It is beyond me how americans can complain about gas prices. In Sweden people pay more than twice as much, and everyone seems to be fine with it. On top of that, americans have even more money to spend than do swedes. So, are americans cheap, or just spoiled?

It is beyond me how americans can complain about gas prices. In Sweden people pay more than twice as much, and everyone seems to be fine with it. On top of that, americans have even more money to spend than do swedes. So, are americans cheap, or just spoiled?

Neither. We're just a terribly spread-out and need lots of fuel.

Your fuel consumption has nothing to do with the size of your country. It is caused simply by a lack of (willingness to introduce) any form of requirements for providing commercial facilities alongside new residential developments, combined with the general mindset that you need a car to get anywhere that this has produced.

My Czech friend's parents marveled constantly while here about how distant everything was from everything else. "You need to drive just to get a loaf of bread?" Yep.

This is where you have a point: the combination of urban sprawl and lack of (use of) public transit means you need to do many short trips.
But that doesn't mean I agree with grandparent... obviously the price of anything increasing that much over such a short period of time is painful.

I don't think Europeans understand just how large the USA relative to Europe and how less populated it is (perhaps a result of seeing Mercator projection maps that exaggerate Europe's size).

I don't think you understand that Europe is a fairly large group of sovereign nations, of wildly different geographical size and layout. Sweden has a population density of 20.6/km2, yet is larger than California (population density 93.3/km2). Certainly people commute comparable distances around Stockholm to what people do around Silicon Valley.

Consider this: the distance from San Diego, California, USA to Bangor, Maine, USA is greater than the distance from Stockholm, Sweden to Delhi, India.

And how many times per year do you usually drive from San Diego to Bangor?
Yes, the US is a huge country, but that is unrelated. People in the US tend to fly instead.

Americans do drive twice as much per capita as Europeans but they actually manage to consume four times as much gas.

It's interesting in the context of the fuel economy demands for the year 2025 (2020? I forget) that have been debated in the US. I checked what the situation in the EU is, and cars sold here actually would be close to these limits already. I suspect most of the difference is due to American consumers simply wanting larger cars and more powerful engines.

You're right. I'm Canadian, and I also live in a location where everything is spread out. I also do not own a car. I also live in a city that has poor public transportation (on most days there is none at all). I walk and bike. 39 years old, own my own home. Aside from not spending money on a car or fuel, I find that I spend less on impulse purchases. When you have to carry everything in a back pack (or think about it on the way home and then come back or order online), you spend less money on stuff.

This has nothing to do with being spread out, either. It comes down to urban planning. Why do people have to live so far from the things they need on a daily basis? We need to do better.

And on the northern side of the US border it's around $5/US Gallon (3.78541L). So about $5.90/imp gallon (4.54609L). That's in CAD though. So $5.10USD for a US gallon, and ~$6/imp gallon.

Not quite as bad but like Europe and the UK this isn't something new. Come winter I'm sure we'll see prices spike to $1.50/L. Diesel is a premium over regular gas/petrol (US deals with that as well, but not to the same degree).

The funny thing is we're an oil producing country. We just don't refine or use any of the oil lo

the infrastructure was NEVER designed for mass transit. the 'american dream' was, since personal transport was available, the horse and buggy and then the car. public trans is an afterthought and not one that ever gets serious consideration. that would require that we think long-term about ourselves and, well, we just CAN'T. see, there are more wars to be fought and more 'defense' spending for various buddies. we can't a

not always (or even frequently) a solution in much of the US. the infrastructure was NEVER designed for mass transit.

Yes it was!

Most major cities had extensive streetcar and interurban lines. It might surprise you that Los Angeles was once a model city for mass transit in the U.S. A massive network of electric trams began running in 1887 and continued on through 1961. The late 50s / early 60s marked the auto boom and death of comprehensive public transit in LA (and many other cities, as well) leaving only some bus routes behind. That began a period of planning designed to focus exclusively on the automobile.

The funny thing is that the whole "People will never stop using X! This city was built for it!" argument against mass transit that you hear today was used against cars 40 years ago - after nearly 80 years of mass transit shaping the city and lifestyle.

Now, LA has become the site of a transit renaissance [metro.net]. The period of time between the end of the Red Car's 74 year run and the completion of the last segment of the Red Line subway was 39 years.

Car-centric planning was a blip. Don't believe the hype that claims otherwise.

While it's true LA has spent a fortune on "transit" in the last few decades, it still hasn't take it seriously. A "renaissance"? Not even close.

Take the 405 freeway. One of the most congested roadways on the entire planet, with both very densely populated residential areas and very densely packed businesses. It's an absurdly ideal case for commuter rail, just build an elevated track down the center from the north SF Valley down to Orange County and you'd make the single largest impact on transportation any city on the planet has ever made. ANY other effort is nothing but a distraction until and unless that is done, period.

What do we do instead? We spend massive amounts on rail projects that come and go from anywhere except where people live, work, or the bulk of our congestion happens. We setup multiple rail lines that you need to switch mid-trip to complete your commute, but make you do that switch outside...in the worst, gang-ridden neighborhoods we have, in locations far out of the way of the actual transit path. The result is that it's actually faster to take a bus much of the time then to take rail...and that's including the fact the buses have to use the heavily congested freeways. And that's if you're willing to take the personal risk...there's no way any sane white woman would commute on that rape-magnet of a train line. Why? Taxi unions...they were afraid people might take rail from LAX rather then a taxi if the rail option didn't completely suck balls.

Oh, and the 405? Yah...we're currently spending insane amounts of money to tear down and rebuild multiple bridges stretching across it, literally move mountains, not for a useful rail line... But to add one more lane each way. Like all the other lanes we've added, it'll have ZERO impact on actual traffic. -It may likely even make it worse as it has in the past as expanding freeways encourages longer commutes, resulting in more miles on the road per driver and more then offsetting the added capacity.

A "transit renaissance" my ass. Los Angeles is a shining example of how NOT to ever build a transit system. It's a rolling calamity that most likely won't ever be solved. Frankly we'll see Google self-driving cars in every garage long before we get a sane transit system. Ironically...they'll work best on our existing freeway-centric systems...eliminating the advantage of any form of mass transit. Yay?

I live in California. We are paying the price for years of anti-business policies and nimbyism. We have no spare refinery capacity, and we have fewer gas stations per-capita than most states, and few new stations are being built.

I don't expect things to get any better. Pro-business people are leaving the state, shifting us even further to the left, and the car-culture is thriving. My son's elementary school has 800 students, and despite perfect weather almost every day, exactly two (2) of them bike to school: my son and a kindergarten girl from our neighborhood. Every morning we pedal past a long line of moms in idling SUVs waiting to drop of their kid.

OPEC kept prices artificially low for a long time. They didn't think anyone would pony up $100 a barrel. Now that they realize people will, that's their price point. Energy will never cost as little as it did a decade ago, but more options open up as the prices go higher. Hybrids become viable despite the extra cost for batteries. Automakers innovate for fuel efficiency instead of performance. Electric becomes a possible option.

What do you mean by artificially low? If OPEC had been charging below cost, they couldn't have kept it up for all these years. I can imagine a cartel keeping prices artificially high, but not artificially low.

Well they could have pumped less over the last couple of decades and pushed the price up. There were a couple of times I can recall when speculation pushed the price higher and they got together and agreed to increase output to push it back down to what they thought the most people would be willing to pay. They had a range from about $40 a barrel to about $100 a barrel that they were playing in, and they usually tried to keep it pegged at about $60 a barrel (Going from memory, so I might be a bit off.)

If someone came up with a good in-road delivery system for electricity for cars, they could probably successfully pitch wiring all our roads for electricity

There are already good proposals for doing this that do not require wiring the roads. These proposals assume that in the future cars will be capable of driving in "platoons", separated by only a few inches to reduce drag and increase road capacity.

Option 1: inductive coupling. Cars contain coils in their bumpers that can transmit and receive energy from cars immediately in front or behind them. If you are on a long drive, the computer in your car negotiates with the computer in the other cars and buys power from them. If you are on a short commute, and have spare power, you sell the power to other cars as you drive and make a small profit.

Option 2: magnetic coupling. This is similar, but the bumpers contain electro-magnets that pull or push leading or trailing cars. So if you are on a long trip, you get on a freeway, join a platoon, automatically negotiate to buy power, and then coast to your destination without consuming any of your own battery power. You could even use your engine to recharge your battery as you siphon power from the rest of the platoon.

Both of these proposals assume that cars on short trips are more common than cars on long drives. That is mostly true. But on long stretches of highway it is possible that dedicated vehicles with big batteries (or CNG generators on board) will be used to convoy platoons of regular cars.

I'm a work-from-home computer programmer with two full time jobs doing this.

Taking the vehicle out of the equation makes the problem less relevant. Sure, the cost of food goes up because the cost of transporting it went up. But seriously: I only drive on friday once a month when I need to resupply a month's worth of beer and food.

A year ago I was bankrupt and now its looking like I could buy a house next year. Just commit to it and stick with it and these gas prices don't hurt at all.

Lots of critics argue plugins don't make economic sense. But looking at the long game ( next few decades ), getting plugins to the point where economies of scale reduces their price is one of the best solutions to this energy problem.

On the other hand, we are producing more oil. Why hasn't the price fallen?

We have embarked on QE3 (after QE2 and QE1). We are printing money and injecting it into the Financial Institutions on Wall Street. Obviously countries who have been producing products for the United States (like oil) for decades and decades know that the value of the dollar is going to slide. Not saying crash necessarily, but there isn't any doubt in the world it is going to slide.

What do you do if you are such a country? You raise your prices. Because the dollar isn't going to be worth as much going forward.

This is the stated goal of Paul Krugman. Get Inflation up to 5 percent or 6 percent even. That is going to increase (he claims) employment. But prices lag the actual inflation, and wages lag the actual inflation even more.

So the result is going to be higher prices and lower real wages, less ability to buy goods (because we increasingly uses foreign components and raw materials even in domestic goods).

We are proudly following Japan into 20 years of dragging economic activity. And I think that is the up side.

Wow. You manage to bring in one thing to explain this thing and get it spectacularly wrong. As someone else pointed out, the Columbus Day weekend is the traditional ramp down time for refineries in the U.S. as they rejigger their formulation for fall (You didn't know refineries changed formulas for the season?). Also, several major supply routes got messed up:

"Among the recent disruptions, an Aug. 6 fire at a Chevron Corp. refinery in Richmond left one of the region's largest refineries producing at a reduced capacity, and a Chevron pipeline that moves crude to northern California also was shut down. There also was a power failure that affected an Exxon Mobil Corp. refinery in Torrance, but the refinery has resumed normal operations."

As for Krugman and this being all the fault of QEx: there's a reason gas is not part of the core measure of inflation. Last I checked, we aren't in an inflation cycle yet [calculatedriskblog.com]. Gas is a volatile price (no-pun intended) that jumps way up and down responding to things like, you know, refineries having fires and pipeline shut downs. It's left out of most inflation conversations among economists.

Anyway, thanks for playing! Here's a home version of the game "The Eeeevil Fed Is Coming For Your Savings!!"

I'd say a 97% debasement of the dollar since 1972 would tend to cut into one's savings, if it were all in cash.

Now before you start bashing people who save money in cash, remember that for about 150 years or so it was abnormal for people to buy stocks and other "risky" investments. Most people held cash, bonds and CDs. Stock brokers were generally put in the same category as casino operators when it came to investing. It's only been in the last 30-40 years that high risk investing was considered acceptable

This is the stated goal of Paul Krugman. Get Inflation up to 5 percent or 6 percent even. That is going to increase (he claims) employment. But prices lag the actual inflation, and wages lag the actual inflation even more.

In other words, Paul Krugman says you're making too much money. Since you're so expensive, you're taking jobs away from the poor unemployed souls who desperately want jobs instead of food stamps. And then your employer pumps up your productivity with the latest labor saving machinery (made

The fact that 2005 was the peak of oil consumption in the US is irrelevant. Oil prices are set on the global market so what you need to consider is how much oil is being consumed globally and it has almost consistently been higher every year.

What do they have to do with the price of oil? They provide electricity, which currently comes from other fossil fuels (mostly). This is an issue onto itself (assuming you're not just in denial about carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide) but the only cost issue here is that coal is too fucking cheap for the amount of damage it causes.

I live in San Diego and on Monday,October 1st, the local Chevron was 4.09. When I got home, it was 4.19. When I woke up on Tuesday, it was already 4.29. Yesterday, it was already 4.89. Big Oil is saying that a refinery that is responsible for 8% of production, a power outage and the switch from Summer blend to Winter blend (appearently there is different additives during the year) is causing the spike. People out here believe there is gouging going on while the local independent stations are shutting do

It is $4 per gallon. What really irks me is that you can work the math backward and come to the conclusion that a gallon of gasoline costs less than $1.50 to extract, ship, process and distribute. Another $0.50 is tax. So the other $2 - is just pure ass-rape profit.

It's probably seen as more efficient to have a single large power generator burn the fuel and turn it into electricity that gets converted to mechanical energy; then hundreds of thousands of smaller less efficient generators burn it and turn it into mechanical energy.

That's not really it. It depends on where your generating capacity is coming from. If it's coming from coal plants, you shouldn't buy an electric car—gas is cleaner. If it's coming from wind, you should definitely buy an electric car if it makes economic sense to you personally. The Chevy Volt is a nice compromise if you have a sub-30-mile commute. It would be nice if generation source information were readily available, but of course nobody has any incentive to publish it—electric car

I find it interesting that no one is talking about the manufactured price hike.
This means that gas companies basically caused this on purpose (something they have been doing for quite some time).
Where the fuck is the outrage and the call for regulations or penalties?

That's not really it. It depends on where your generating capacity is coming from. If it's coming from coal plants, you shouldn't buy an electric car—gas is cleaner. If it's coming from wind, you should definitely buy an electric car if it makes economic sense to you personally.

Actually, You're missing the entire point of an electric car. People think you should get one because of environmental concerns. The reasons to get one are entirely economic, and the tipping point is almost here (if not already). Electric cars use far cheaper electricity for their operation. the EPA has an MPGe rating that gives a pretty good comparison of the *cost* of fuel. This means that for the cost of the electricity on average, you could use gas and get that same mileage for you money. There is a reason that Electric cars are rated in the high double digits or low triple digits. I own a Miev, and the cost of my daily commute is so low I haven't noticed the difference on my monthly utility bill. I drive about 30 miles a day 5 Days a week. The vehicle cost me $490 / month for 72 months. The cost of Electricity I have estimated to be about $23-$26 / month. Now comes the good part: Cost of electricity is really very stable, and does not increase very fast. That means that in 5 years when gas is $6 / gallon, and you are spending $250+ / month on gas, I will still be spending $25. Also, Gasoline engines are complex and easily damaged through mishandling and improper maintenance. A gas engine really only has a life expectancy of about 5,000 to 10,000 hours (200 to 400 k miles). Electric motors with MTBF of 50,000+ hours are not uncommon. That means that the motor in your electric car is likely to out-live you. The Motor controllers (if properly designed) have only one part with a low MTBF, and if properly designed, this $10 part should be swappable on the controller. My Miev has coolant, but it doesn't run hot, so there is little likelihood of normal operating resulting in damage to the cooling system. Regenerative braking significantly reduces the wear load on the brakes making them last for 3x or 4x longer. In all, my only real expense in the first 5 years will be tires... I expect that reduction in maintenance costs alone will save a further $40 / month. Now lets add it all up and figure out the ROI. First, We will use three use cases: the first 200,000 miles, 400,000 and 1,000,000. For 200,000 miles, the gas car uses 8,000 gallons of gas at an average of $5 per gallon (remember this has to include reasonable price increases over the next 14 years). That comes to $40,000 for gas. The cost of the vehicle is about $20,000. The cost of maintenance is about $5,500. (oil changes brakes and tires. Total cost is $65,500 for 14 years and the car is basically on its last legs. Many parts on the verge of failure, unreliable. Now take the electric: Base cost $35,000. Cost of fuel is $4,000 ($25 per month for 168 months). Maintenance costs $1,750. Total cost is $40,750, and the car is mostly in running order with one caveat: It needs a new battery. Todays cost: $10,000 (eight years from now this cost is expected to be half what it is today. Total cost for 14 years: $50,750. The electric has a clear advantage.

Now for the 400k miles scenario:

for the second 200,000 miles, the gas vehicle costs an additional $56,000 in gas (gas went up to $7 average for the period, an increase of 28% over 14 years (2% inflation). Costs of maintenance have soared as all the moving parts have worn out and needed to be replaced. $7,300. Total cost for the second 14 years: $64,300. The electric costs have gone up also. Electricity now costs $35 / month (2% across 14 years), so the cost comes to $5,900. Cost of maintenance includes another battery replacement for an additional $10,000 plus the regular $1,800. Lets add in an additional $4000 X-factor just to cover incidentals, like maybe we fried a motor controller, or some other unexpected weakness in this particular cars design. Total: $21,700.

Right now it's a comparison of industrial strength electric motors with consumer gas engines. As the electric car will become more popular, the same trade-offs will be made (weight, durability, price) as for consumer gas engines.

Umm, what? Lets take this whole thing point by point. You're clearly suffering from a lack of actual knowledge. Let me help you with that. To put this in perspective, I work for an industrial transportation company. We have a large commercial fleet of vehicles, some of them EVs, most conventional. We also have a large warehousing and freight forwarding operation which makes use of vast quantities of industrial electric motors. So, we can be described as having a pretty good perspective on all of the various technologies involved, as well as what would be described as expert knowledge of the operational profiles of the most industrial equipment available.

Window wiper motors, window motors, fan motors all die multiple times before the engine fails. Most cars are wrecked with a capable engine. Most engines are not economic viable once difficult-to-reach seals need be replaced. Nevertheless, gasoline engines have a huge tolerance for maluse and neglect (excessive play, valve problems, etc.), electric tends to be more of the ON/OFF type.

Without regular maintenance (weekly oil and water, Three month PMI, yearly state inspection and daily pre-trip inspection of our vehicles, they would quickly become dangerously non-functional. Engine problems are the usual trouble and engine failure is frequent enough that our vehicle specifications require easy engine replacement procedures compared to passenger vehicles. We typically go through 2 to three engines in a vehicles operational life of fifteen years. Typical mileage on the vehicles at retirement is between 300k and 600k miles. 400k is considered quite good for one of our engines (They are rated for 10,000 hours or 300k miles). By contrast, most of our vehicles are taken out of service with the original wiper motors, fan motors (only a small percentage of the fleet has electric fan motors) or water pumps. Even more telling, we can use the stats for the belt drive motors in use in our local warehousing facility. The drives are rated at 18kW continuous with peak load handling of 30kW for 10 seconds. We have around seventy five of them in our warehouse. I have been stationed in this building for ten years, and in that time, we have had one drive motor fail after a new variable speed controller was installed wrong and overloaded the motor (and itself). The MTBF on our motors from the manufacturer are 100,000 hours continuous operation, and 75,000 hours for 50% rapid duty cycle operation, but in our operation we have many motors that are well past the 200,000 mark, and none that have failed in service. The manufacturers don't even list MTBF information because its pretty meaningless. I had to go digging to even find Baldors specs on it, and they have a disclaimer that they really don't know what the expected life span is because almost all of their motors are decommissioned long before they fail. Whenever you hear about motor failures, its always because they're being overloaded / pushed beyond spec.

When both applications are compared in the same industrial environment, large freighters, heavy machinery, I've seen electrical (sub)engines always need be replaced multiple times, under far less demanding conditions. wartsila.

Yeah, whatever. Making electric motors last is a matter of correctly sizing the motor for the application. If you're constantly frying motors, its because you used a motor that is not large enough for the application. Going to the next size up will fix most of that problem for you. A sufficiently sized and maintained electric motor can and will last decades. We have several 275kW Baldors in our building that have been in service since the 50's. They are never run past 25% capacity which keeps them nice and cool. B

Yeah because everyone knows you can't use solar and wind to charge your car. I mean, this guy does it: http://www.rowetel.com/blog/?p=78 but that's a stupid idea up there with the solar (charged) flashlight! All that crap about hydroelectric dams, tidal power, geothermal and other green energy is just made up by liberals.. those things don't exist either and never will.

As we all know, if it involves change, or it's harder than flipping a switch then it's just plain not worth doing. That's the exact attitude

All that crap about hydroelectric dams, tidal power, geothermal and other green energy is just made up by liberals.. those things don't exist either and never will.

I'd love (love) to see your charge your electric car from solar where I live. You might be able to make it down the street a few weeks a year. Snow, clouds, rain, and the simple fact that there is only ~8 hours of sunlight during the winter means it is almost impossible to use that here. Wind is never reliable, almost anywhere, even at the best of times. Hydroelectric? There is some, but that takes a massive amount of land, and is rather dangerous, if the dam breaks (in one instance killing 100,000+ people,

There is this neat electric grid thing we have where you can get power produced elsewhere delivered to you.

Also, the Banqiao dam wasn't only for electric generation, it was also for flood control (which it obviously failed catastrophically at during a bad typhoon). It probably would have existed, and subsequently still failed, even if it hadn't been used for hydroelectric. It's also hard to determine exactly which deaths would and would not have been caused by the typhoon if the dam hadn't been built.

I'd love (love) to see your charge your electric car from solar where I live. You might be able to make it down the street a few weeks a year. Snow, clouds, rain, and the simple fact that there is only ~8 hours of sunlight during the winter means it is almost impossible to use that here. Wind is never reliable, almost anywhere, even at the best of times. Hydroelectric? There is some, but that takes a massive amount of land, and is rather dangerous, if the dam breaks (in one instance killing 100,000+ people, but that is nearly worst case). Also, expensive. Tidal? The nearest ocean is ~1,000 miles away, good luck with that. Geothermal? Yeah, can't do that either. So unless you expect to pipe the power thousands of miles (expensive, wasteful, and difficult to maintain), none of that is going to work for me, or large sections of the world's population.

Nuclear? Works fantastic! Probably powering this computer as I speak. Other than that, it's pretty much all fossil fuels and a little bit of hydro (which is pretty limited in it's expansion options).

But you know, you don't have to personally have the solar panels. They could be located in a central area and have power sent to your location.

So unless you expect to pipe the power thousands of miles (expensive, wasteful, and difficult to maintain), none of that is going to work for me, or large sections of the world's population.

but but but mommy! It's too HAARD!:(

Man up. What do you think coal, oil, natural gas etc power plants do now? Do you even remember the massive power outage that affected a large portion of the United States a few years ago? Enough solar energy hits the earth in an hour to fill all our electrical requirements for a year. The only problem would be getting that energy to where people need it. Stop your wh

Man up. What do you think coal, oil, natural gas etc power plants do now? Do you even remember the massive power outage that affected a large portion of the United States a few years ago? Enough solar energy hits the earth in an hour to fill all our electrical requirements for a year. The only problem would be getting that energy to where people need it. Stop your whining about how hard things are. People could setup individual panels at their homes to reduce load on the grid, and plants can be setup in various locations as well. If one location is cloudy, guess what? Another one probably isn't!

Guess what? That means you need to build twice as many panels/wind generators as you nominally need (at least). That increases the cost 2x, plus of course the cost of a robust power grid to transmit the power. Again, not quite so easy in a part of the world near tornado alley, where power loss is already moderately common... and where loosing power in the winter means people can start dying.

If everyone starts using electric cars, that represents a massive increase in demand. According to this [need.org] [PDF WARNING] report, ~28% of US energy demand is in transportation, which means our demand for electrical power will go up significantly (30-40% is probably a decent estimation). If you double production costs and increase demand, combined with the vastly increased cost of electric cars (themselves hardly environmentally friendly to make. Side note: the Prius is supposedly worse for the environment than a normal gas-powered car because of the costs of building the batteries and motors) and suddenly you are looking at transport costs 2-3 times greater than they are now. Good luck getting that to happen, considering people already complain about the high costs of gas (which already has significant economical impact).

My point with hydroelectrical was it doesn't scale. If you try to make it scale, you run out of land for people to live and farm, and your entire cost of living goes up considerably. My entire point is that while green energy sounds nice, it is nowhere near practical yet, and won't be for years yet. Electric generation and storage is simply not good enough yet, and that is ignoring the fact that green power sources rarely are as green as they seem (like the Prius mentioned earlier: they always have environmental costs people don't like to talk about). Such as, for example, the fact that magnets used in electric motors requires rare earths, which have massive pollution by-products. I'm speaking realistically here when I say the only green technology we have, right now, that could fill our electric needs not only practically but cost-efficiently is nuclear.

Doesn't matter how much energy is hitting the planet from the sun, we simply cannot collect it effectively. Even an efficient solar panel is only 15% or so efficient. And expensive. And unreliable.

Glad to hear Washington is doing so well, but it's not the norm. California doesn't have as many hydroelectric facilities, so more electricity comes from burning stuff.

Food for thought: If you add demand for charging 10,000 electric cars, which of those categories would be used to accommodate the demand? I'd presume that of the top 5, the only ones that aren't maxed out already are coal and natural gas. Maybe over time there would be more renewable energy generation and as someone else mentioned, econ

It's not hard to actually dig up the data. You don't have to presume or guess anything.

Where would the power for 10,000 EVs come from? all sources. It's not as if they run Hydro at 100% until they max it out, then run up Coal until that's maxed out, etc... If anything, they run coal flat out all the time because that's the most economical way to operate it. Coal and other thermal cycle powerplants are slow to respond to changes, Hydro is not. So I'd actually posit that the lion's share of power for 10,000 EVs would be from untapped Hydro power.

Scraping Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Washington State has over 27,000 MW of potential hydro power installed. Obviously not all of that will be usable year-round or necessarily all at once, but even if we cut that in half (say 13,000 MW) that's 113,880,000 MWh of electricity per year. In 2011 they used 59,576,028 or 52% of that. 52% of half their installed capacity. There's plenty of headroom there.

To put that into perspective, 10,000 vehicles driving the national average of 15,000 mi/yr with a very conservative 3 mi/kWh would need an extra 50,000 MWh of electricity... a 0.05% increase over the 91,106,272 MWh they already use. Drop in the bucket. If everyone in the entire state bought an EV - even the ones who don't currently own or are even eligible to own a car - power consumption would rise about 37%. You're still well within the state's installed hydroelectric generating capacity.

So no, I don't think the coal plants will burn any hotter at all.

For what reasons they don't use 100% hydro I cannot say - probably a mix of political, economic, engineering and practical reasons along with selling power outside the state.=Smidge=

What's special about CA that made them have a higher increase than the rest of us?

California has different gasoline formulation standards than the rest of the country, so gasoline cannot be brought in from other states. At this time of year, they are switching from the state-mandated "summer formulation" to "winter formulation", so inventories are low. Then, there was a refinery fire in August, which shut down some of the state's gasoline production. Combine those factors and you have all the necessary conditions for shortages.

Every state requires its own special gasoline blend which is the most asinine concept ever developed. If California runs out of California blend they cannot buy blends designed for other states. If Nevada runs out of gas, tough shit they have to wait for the refinery to make more. What makes these two states require different gas? All the cars are made the same, a car sold in Alaska can run just fine with gas from Arizona so what is the problem here? Don't get me started on how no new refineries have been b

Not every state.. The nation is divided into zones regulated by the EPA based around climate and population and most states will fall into one of these zones and have a default formulation. California decided it was going to make its own more stringent requirements because it wouldn't hurt anything and save the environment. Some other states have followed but I'm not sure which ones.

can't believe you pay what, $3.60 per gallon. jesus we had such prices 20 years ago. Calculating from litres to gallons,and from USD to EUR, they charge $8.64 a gallon here, in germany. everyone excluding me stop complaining;)

However, across the pond, people there live far closer together, and have a lot more options than a car. You have trains, trams, streetcars, buses, teleport pads out of Larry Niven books, and roads that are in good repair. In Europe, people can live in a city core and not get a 9mm round to the cranium because some 15 year old is needing to take a video of gunning down a tourist for their "blood in" ritual.

In the US, to live within walking distance of a job, you have to be pretty rich. Bicycling distance is different, but if you don't get run over (hit and runs are extremely common, and the local PD doesn't bother with the case unless someone has something obvious like video of it), you are an easy moving target for gangbangers. As soon as you park and lock your bike up, there is a good chance that it either will be completely missing or not all there (wheels, forks, seats, etc.) Buses? It can take 3-4 hours to get just a few miles due to bad routes, and usually homeless people tend to set up their bedrooms, bathrooms, and soliciting centers in them. Of course, people can mention motorcycles, and they are fast, thrifty on gas, and don't take up much space. However, every rider I know has some sort of permanent injury they got from riding, usually courtesy of a car desiring the space the motorcycle was currently taking up.

So, for most Americans who can't afford to live in the high zoot residential townhomes, a car is a necessity. Yes, it sucks, but that is how life is. You won't find any help from the government anytime soon thanks to all the dollars being poured in to prop up political candidates with the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" meme which is turning the country into some Ayn Randish circle of Hell [1].

[1]: It cracks me up when people call themselves Christian, and then talk about Ayn Rand's philosophy. They are mutually exclusive, and anyone who doesn't see this either hasn't read the Bible or Atlas Shrugged, or is just plain ignorant.

However, across the pond, people there live far closer together, and have a lot more options than a car. You have trains, trams, streetcars, buses, teleport pads out of Larry Niven books, and roads that are in good repair. In Europe, people can live in a city core and not get a 9mm round to the cranium because some 15 year old is needing to take a video of gunning down a tourist for their "blood in" ritual.

In the US, to live within walking distance of a job, you have to be pretty rich. Bicycling distance is different, but if you don't get run over (hit and runs are extremely common, and the local PD doesn't bother with the case unless someone has something obvious like video of it), you are an easy moving target for gangbangers. As soon as you park and lock your bike up, there is a good chance that it either will be completely missing or not all there (wheels, forks, seats, etc.) Buses? It can take 3-4 hours to get just a few miles due to bad routes, and usually homeless people tend to set up their bedrooms, bathrooms, and soliciting centers in them. Of course, people can mention motorcycles, and they are fast, thrifty on gas, and don't take up much space. However, every rider I know has some sort of permanent injury they got from riding, usually courtesy of a car desiring the space the motorcycle was currently taking up.

So, for most Americans who can't afford to live in the high zoot residential townhomes, a car is a necessity. Yes, it sucks, but that is how life is. You won't find any help from the government anytime soon thanks to all the dollars being poured in to prop up political candidates with the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" meme which is turning the country into some Ayn Randish circle of Hell [1].

You live in the wrong city - why would you continue to live in a city where you are constantly in fear of your life and the local police won't help you?

There are lots of nice cities and towns throughout the USA where you can live relatively close to work (or near a usable transit system) without being afraid of getting shot in the head when you go to work.

Some cities that come to mind include San Francisco, Portland OR, Seattle, Santa Cruz.

You may have to adjust your standard of living - instead of a large suburban house, you may be in a small city apartment (which you can do even with kids, you may not have a yard, but will have a park + large playground a short walk away), but that's a tradeoff that millions of people are happy to make.

If you want to save gas, but think a motorcycle is too dangerous, look into a small hybrid car Back when i commuted on an FJ1200, my gas milage was in the low 30's (a new FJR1300 is rated at 39mpg). A Prius will give you over 40mpg. If you don't want a hybrid, a Volkswagon TDI diesel will also give you over 40mpg. Or if you want a more conventional gas powered car, look at Honda Fit (mpg in the 30's), or Mazda3 skyactive (up to 40mpg highway).

I have a 12 mile bike commute, which is close to the upper bound of how far many people are willing to bike (an hour each way is a little farther than many people are wiling to ride), but it lets me live affordably close to SF without paying exhorbitant apartment rates. I live within an easy walk to a train station, so I can choose between commuting by bike or by train. I have a car, but put around 6000 miles/year on it, mostly for out of town trips. I don't even drive to the grocery store since I live within a 2 minute walk to the store.

I'm not wealthy, I just chose where to live based on having a non-car commute.

Record profits for oil companies while roads crumble is the America Way (trademarked, copyrighted, guaranteed Communist free, known to cause cancer in California, all rights reserved). Jesus loves profits, hates poor people and drives a big ass Hummer so he doesn't feel the potholes.

Do yourself a favor, and look at the current electoral map, then compare it, state by state, region by region (the red and blue) with a gas price temperature map. Draw your own conclusions. Except for a few states with very small contributions to the electoral college, prices are UP in "blue states".

Texas isn't in trouble: red state. What color by comparison. Look at the electoral map, then look at the electoral votes, then compare again. It maps almost perfectly save NM (3votes), and so forth.

Where are the prices higher? Where the opposition could gain electoral votes-- not quite perfectly in a visual sense, but the correlation is too close to ignore. I watched it in 2008; go look in the history in 2010, too. You'll see the pattern. Change votes by applying economic pressure,

Note the following states which have plentiful electoral votes: CA, WA, NY, MA, IL, MI, IN, all states that if flopping over to the Red side of this map: http://www.270towin.com/ [270towin.com] helps demonstrate the effect.

Red states that aren't in question (mostly the US South and central Midwest from TX to ND), are enjoying inexpensive fuel today. It will continue to be the case for the next four weeks. Inflicted pain will h

Well that's what happens when you let your politicians gouge the living hell out of you with taxes. We don't have any VAR taxes bleeding us dry either, but that doesn't mean we are just gonna sit back and let them start piling taxes on. Maybe its time that you in the EU made your own TEA (Taxed Enough Already) party and let the politicians know you're tired of their hands in your wallet?

As for the gas prices here, $3.59 a gallon in north central AR. I'm just glad i don't have to work in the state capital

Well that's what happens when you let your politicians gouge the living hell out of you with taxes. We don't have any VAR taxes bleeding us dry either, but that doesn't mean we are just gonna sit back and let them start piling taxes on. Maybe its time that you in the EU made your own TEA (Taxed Enough Already) party and let the politicians know you're tired of their hands in your wallet?

You (and many others I'm sure) might find it instructive to actually find out what percentage of the average European's income goes to taxes, vs. what percentage of the average American's income does (hint: it's *much* closer than you think, and do keep in mind that most taxes Americans pay are both hidden and regressive). Then ponder the services Europeans get for giving up all that money, vs. the services Americans get (hint: not even close).

I'm from Europe (UK). I don't mind paying taxes. Actually I would like them to go up. That way we can increase what we spend on socially cohesive and useful things like State Education and the NHS. ("Socialised" medicine is generally viewed in an almost diametrically opposite way over here than it seems to be viewed over where you are in the States. I think it is fantastic. I'm not alone, and woe betide any government that breaks it. I can get ill and know I won't be bankrupted).

"Maybe its time that you in the EU made your own TEA (Taxed Enough Already) party and let the politicians know you're tired of their hands in your wallet?"

Why? we get something for it.

Where I live the minimum wage is 2347$ for everybody of 18 years of age without any qualification, health benefits for everyone, guaranteed minimum income even if you can't/won't work, minimum pensions for everyone, survivor pensions for everyone allied to a person having worked at least 12 months, disability pensions if you get hurt or sick, a year and a half of unemployment benefits, months of vacation for mom and dad when a kid comes to the family, no matter which way, perfect roads, free schools, University costs a couple of hundred bucks a year and for 5 bucks you can use all the public transports for 24 hours throughout the country, 50 bucks for a month.